The orphanage corridor stretched before Brando like an endless tunnel. At twelve years old, he knew every inch of the place: every crack, every corner, every hiding spot. But this corridor was different. Shadows repeatedly emerged, stretching unnaturally toward him, as if wanting to torture him.

  "Murderer."

  The first voice came from the left. Brando spun around, throwing a punch. The shadow retreated before he could reach it.

  "Murderer."

  The second voice came from the right, louder than the previous one. This time Brando lost his temper.

  "I didn't kill anyone," Brando growled into the darkness. "It was an accident."

  He knew exactly why they called him that. Five years ago, during a fight in the orphanage courtyard, he had pushed Michele, another child from the orphanage, down the stairs. He hadn't meant to do it, and everyone had clearly seen that. But it didn't change the fact that Michele never got up again that day.

  The official version was simple: an accidental fall during a fight between kids. The security cameras clearly showed that Brando's push hadn't been hard enough. Michele had tripped on his own, losing his balance in a strange way, as if something had made him suddenly step backward. A tragic accident, everyone had said.

  But the cameras hadn't captured the expression on Michele's face before he fell. It wasn't anger or fear from the push. His eyes had widened, staring at something in Brando's face, something no one else could see. He had screamed and then stumbled backward, hitting his head on the steps.

  "Monster," hissed another voice from the darkness. "We know what you really are."

  "You don't know shit," Brando growled with his fists clenched so tight his knuckles turned white.

  The shadows began to take form. They weren't just voices anymore. Twisted figures emerged from the walls, each with Michele's face in his final moment: eyes wide open and mouth agape in that final scream.

  "We saw it," the shadows said in unison. "There's something you're hiding inside."

  "SHUT YOUR FUCKING MOUTHS!"

  Brando lunged at the nearest one. His fist passed through it like smoke, but the shadow dissolved with an inhuman scream. Others took its place, surrounding him in a macabre dance.

  "Do you remember his last words?" A voice stronger than the others. "Before he died?"

  "Enough..." Brando's voice trembled, not from fear but from rage.

  "'The eyes,'" the shadow continued, reciting Michele's words verbatim. "'His eyes... there's something inside...'"

  Brando attacked again, more violently this time. His hands tried to grab the shadows, to tear them apart and silence them. But it was like fighting smoke.

  "Since that day, you've learned to hide it, haven't you?" The voices overlapped. "To keep it inside. To pretend to be normal."

  "But we know the truth."

  "We've always known."

  The shadows merged into a single mass, a vortex of darkness that began to tighten around Brando. At its center, thousands of eyes opened in unison, all with Michele's final expression of terror.

  "Show yourself," the voices whispered. "Show yourself as you did that day."

  "No..." Brando fell to his knees, pressing his hands hard against his temples. He felt something moving inside him, something pushing to get out.

  "SHOW YOURSELF!"

  It was then that the darkness dissolved, giving way to a sudden feeling of warmth. The smell of coffee and freshly baked bread crept into Brando's nostrils, chasing away the cold of the nightmare. He found himself sitting at the orphanage kitchen table, with morning sunlight filtering through worn curtains.

  "Still staring into space, squirt?"

  Adelaide, seventeen, dark hair gathered in a messy bun, was kneading bread on the worn wooden table. She hadn't even turned around, but she always knew when Brando was lost in his thoughts.

  Brando looked up, seeing Adelaide deeply focused on her dough. He wrinkled his nose, surprised by her perceptiveness.

  "You always know when I'm distracted. How do you do it?"

  Adelaide turned for a second, showing a tired half-smile. "I know you. When you don't talk for too long, I know you're brooding over something."

  "The others..." Brando began, then stopped.

  Adelaide snorted and glanced toward the door, making sure they were alone. "Who cares about the others." She turned completely with her hands still covered in flour. "Here, I made cookies."

  "I'm not hungry." Brando shook his head, feeling his stomach knot at the thought that returned to Michele.

  "That wasn't a question. Do you want me to eat them all myself and become two hundred pounds? No need to be polite." Adelaide took one and practically put it in his hand. "I made them with cinnamon. The one I stole from the director's pantry."

  Brando looked at her in surprise. Adelaide never stole.

  "She said it's forbidden for us because it costs too much." Adelaide shrugged. "Well, c'est la vie. They certainly won't go bankrupt because of this. Come on, eat it. A cookie won't kill anyone."

  As soon as the words left her mouth, Adelaide stiffened. Very unfortunate choice of words. Her face contorted into a grimace, and she snatched the cookie from Brando's hands with an abrupt movement.

  "You know what? Forget it," she said quickly, avoiding his gaze. "You're not worthy of my stolen cinnamon cookies." She stuffed the entire cookie in her mouth, and her cheeks puffed out like a squirrel's. "See?" she added, chewing noisily. "All mine."

  A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

  Brando let a small smile surface. It was small, almost imperceptible, but it was there. Adelaide had always been good at recovering when she made a gaffe. She swallowed with an exaggerated effort, then went back to kneading with more vigor than necessary, as if wanting to punish the dough for her slip-up.

  "Once," she said suddenly, without raising her eyes from her floured hands, "I pushed my younger sister against a radiator. She split her forehead open, needed four stitches."

  Brando's head snapped up. He didn't know Adelaide had a sister.

  "We had fought over some stupid doll." Her hands worked the dough with precise, rhythmic movements. "I pushed her, she fell badly. That's all."

  "It's not the same as Michele."

  "Yes, I know." Adelaide finally turned to look at him. "It's different, but it's the same. You didn't want it to happen."

  "I saw his eyes," Brando murmured. "Before he fell. He was terrified."

  "Children get scared easily," Adelaide replied simply. "Take it from someone who saw her sister scream over a small cut like she was dying. But small things seem enormous when you're small."

  Tears began to stream down Brando's face before he could stop them.

  "Here, I'll teach you how to knead," Adelaide said suddenly. "It'll be good for you to keep your hands busy. When you make bread, you can't think about anything else."

  There was something in the way she said it, without pity but with kindness, that made Brando feel less broken inside. He wiped his eyes with his sleeve. "Really? Can I?"

  Adelaide motioned for him to come closer. "Come. I'll show you. First rule: you have to feel the dough under your fingers. It's alive, in a way."

  Brando stood up and moved beside her. His small, uncertain hands sank into the soft, warm dough under Adelaide's guidance. There was something hypnotic about the way the dough yielded and then resisted under pressure.

  "See?" Adelaide said. "It's not complicated. It's just a matter of time and patience."

  It was in that moment that Brando understood. Adelaide wasn't just offering comfort. She was offering him a place beside her. A refuge. Something to do with his hands when his mind became too noisy.

  And it was right there, with his fingers sunk in the dough and the scent of cinnamon in the air, that Brando made two decisions that would change his life forever.

  The first: he would never cry again. Never. Tears were for normal children, those who could afford the luxury of weakness. He wasn't normal, and he never would be.

  The second decision was harder, deeper: he would bury that thing inside him so deep that no one would ever see it again. No matter what it was or how much it pressed to get out. He would keep it chained in the darkness of his soul. For Adelaide, for himself, and to never again see that expression of terror on someone else's face.

  "Adelaide," he murmured, feeling the scene beginning to dissolve. "We'll never leave each other, will we?"

  She didn't answer right away. She took some flour and blew it on his nose, leaving a white spot. "See you tomorrow, same place, same time. I've got a lot of bread to teach you how to make."

  The smell of cookies and coffee slowly transformed into something colder, more sterile. But this time, Brando wasn't afraid. Those two promises to himself were stronger and more solid than any nightmare.

  The last thing Brando felt, as the dream slipped away like fog in the sun, was Adelaide's scent slowly transforming into something more sterile. No longer the smell of flour and coffee from the orphanage kitchen, but the sharp aroma of disinfectant that seemed to burn his nostrils.

  His eyes then snapped open.

  The ceiling above him was low and peeling, crossed by rusty pipes, and a high window filtered a dull, gray light. Brando was lying on a bed with a metal frame, and the thin mattress creaked with his every movement. The air smelled of mold and cheap medicine. Brando found himself in what was called the "infirmary of the last." The one reserved for low-ranking students or those of poor lineage.

  The first thing Brando noticed was the absence of pain. He vividly remembered how his bones shattered and his flesh was torn under Davide Ripa's blows. Yet, it was all gone. In its place, he felt an unnatural numbness that wrapped around his body like a blanket of dense fog.

  His vision was blurry. The ceiling above him was a patchwork of cracks and damp spots, crossed by rusty pipes that looked like metal snakes, and a constant electrical buzz tickled his wrists. He lowered his gaze and discovered thin electrodes attached to his skin, connected to a monitor that must have been at least as old as the Academy. The greenish display traced his vital signs with trembling lines, as if the machine itself was struggling to function.

  "Shit..." he muttered in a voice that sounded hoarse. He tried to prop himself up on his elbows. His muscles protested weakly, but there wasn't the searing pain he expected. Whatever they were injecting through that IV was doing its job almost too well.

  Brando looked around. A metal chair next to the bed held his clothes, folded with a precision that clashed with the rest of the environment. On the wall hung a cheap calendar showing the date in faded red numbers. Saturday. Four days had passed since...

  The memory hit him like a punch to the stomach. The puppy mutating, Davide Ripa, the beating, the humiliation. And then what? His memory was hazy. There had been rain, maybe. And then a figure.

  A sharper beep from the KryoWatch, which was placed near the monitor, interrupted his thoughts. It was a warning to remind him that he had only forty-eight hours left to reach [Violet One] Stage. Esposito's deadline loomed like a guillotine suspended above his neck, and he had been unconscious for four whole days.

  But something didn't add up in that room. The bandages wrapped around his chest were clean and precise, recently changed. The floor wasn't filthy but had been swept. Someone had taken care of him, and not with the negligence you'd expect in the infirmary of the last.

  But most importantly, who had brought him here?

  A movement in the darkest corner of the room caught his attention. The puppy was there, curled up between two rusty metal cabinets.

  "Hey," Brando whispered, and his voice sounded less hoarse this time. "Come here."

  The creature didn't move immediately. It studied him for a long moment, as if trying to make sure it was really him. Then, with cautious movements, the puppy emerged from the shadow.

  There was no trace of the mutation that had struck it that night. Its fur had returned to normal, without those icy veins that had exploded under its skin. Then the temperature of its body seemed to have returned to normal, judging by the way it moved.

  "How...?" Brando murmured as the puppy approached him. It was impossible. Glacial mutations didn't spontaneously regress. Once started, they proceeded relentlessly to the end. And yet...

  The puppy jumped onto the bed with a fluid movement, making the mattress springs creak. It curled up against his side, emanating a warmth that contrasted with his memories of that night. The third eye on its forehead closed lazily, as if everything was perfectly normal. But nothing was normal. Four days. He had lost four whole days, days he should have used to train, to reach [Violet One] Stage, to prove he deserved a place in this Academy that seemed to want to reject him with every fiber of its existence.

  "Shit," he hissed, clenching his fists until his knuckles turned white. "Shit, shit, SHIT!"

  The monitor next to the bed emitted another beep of protest. His heartbeats had shot up again, but he didn't care. How could he care about his vital signs when everything he had fought for was slipping away like sand between his fingers?

  The fragments of that night continued to torment him. He remembered the rain hitting him as he lay in the mud. He remembered the metallic taste of blood in his mouth, the humiliation that burned more fiercely than the physical pain. And then... what? There had been something after, something important that his mind refused to grasp.

  A flash of memory hit him: rain falling, blonde hair shining in the dark, and then... nothing. Total void.

  "Who...?" he murmured. The puppy let out a small whimper, as if sensing his agitation. It rubbed its muzzle against his hand, a gesture so normal, so impossibly normal after what had happened.

  "It doesn't make sense," he said, absentmindedly scratching the puppy's head. "How did we end up here? Who fixed you up?"

  Questions accumulated in his mind like storm clouds. Not his miraculously healed body, not the puppy returned to normal, not those four days vanished into nothingness as if they had never existed.

  But what drove him crazy was a feeling telling him that someone had been there the whole time, watching over him. A ghost who had put him back on his feet and then disappeared into thin air. Then a shiver ran down his spine. The air changed suddenly. The light from the window flickered, as if rippled by an invisible wave.

  The puppy snapped to attention, all three eyes wide open, staring at a point beyond Brando's shoulders. The two of them were no longer alone in that room.

  "You've slept a lot."

  The voice froze the blood in his veins. He didn't need to turn around to know who it was. Bianca-fucking-Ruggeri was there.